


Mr. B's Fridge

by Anonymous



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Death, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, Other, Violence, disturbing images
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 16:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19360693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Home, gone. Run away. Next-door neighbor. He calls himself Mr. B.Do whatever you want,he said,as long as you stay away from the door at the end of the hallway.written for Rock A Bye FestRB034





	Mr. B's Fridge

**Author's Note:**

> ### Mod Notes
> 
> This work is written for the 2019 Rock A Bye Fic Fest: Round 1. We hope you enjoy! Make sure to give our writers all the love that they deserve~ Authors will be revealed on June 25!  
>  **Prompt:** RB034 - Chanyeol goes home one day and he realizes that his home has changed from a place he once found safety in to a place he has come to fear. At least the next-door neighbors are nice enough to let him sleep inside.  
>  **Word count:** 10,109 words  
>  **Rating:** 16+  
>  **Pairing:** None  
>  **Characters:** Chanyeol, Unknown Character  
>  **Side pairing/s: None**
> 
> **Warning/s: Gore, Mentions of Death, Violence**
> 
> ### Author's Notes
> 
> Hi, readers and (hopefully) the very special prompter!
> 
> I do hope that you’ll have fun reading the story as much as I wrote it. Admittedly you do have to have a strong stomach to digest most of the content, because the story somehow turned out to be a bit more critical and politically-driven than I expected. Some of you might recognise this writing style and ruin the surprise of the author reveal (which would suck), but you’ve come this far andddd… here we are!
> 
> I initially thought when I began to plan the plot for it, that it would be a bit more light-hearted, because this is a kiddie ficfest—apparently not, and my typical writing style annoyingly persists. I think that works out for the prompter however, who wished me to break their heart as much as possible. Here’s kudos to everyone who wrote a harmless fluffy story. Mine is—spoiler alert—unfortunately not :’-D
> 
>  
> 
> **IMPORTANT: This story contains pictures and links to music. It’s not required to make sense of the plot, but it’s 100% better if you listen to each part with their respective songs.**

****

#  **MR. B'S FRIDGE**

 

**0: ANDANTE / A NOTE**

My name is Park Chanyeol, and I am twenty-eight. The age so suggests that I am much less naïve than I was eight, and listen carefully to the weight of these numbers for they are of significance. What I am about to disclose to you is what I come to call _The Incident_ , and it is a tale that I have never dreamed of revealing to anyone else _._ It is not the whole story, and rather simply parts that I regard of importance that will paint enough pictures for you to get an idea. What I am about to tell you is in its full sobriety, as far as my memory can collect, and only your subjective perception can give it as much sustenance as I can vividly remember it.

So, let us start.

 

* * *

 

 

 **I: GENESIS  
** [LACRIMOSA – REQUIEM IN D MINOR, K. 626 BY MOZART (1791)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-TrAvp_xs)

Picture it in your head, as well as you can. I was an eight-year-old; as innocent, as stupid, as bright as you can picture. Lean, a scrap of a boy, cheeks richly stuffed like Christmas stockings and a pair of ears too big for my body. Corresponding to most eight-year-olds, I am anti-lethargic, I know basic maths, and I was old enough to understand what shooting video games meant. I went to school, and whenever I come home I expend that eight-year-old-child energy on whatever interested me. Then it’s dinner, then a small expat with my mother about the (in)significance of consuming vegetables, then a small bit of TV-watching before my nine-o-clock bedtime.

Routine is delightful, and we take the boring life for granted. I vividly remember my mother constantly wanting vacations—Switzerland and skiing, Bali and enriching exotic culture and endless sands and beaches, or Barcelona with the same beaches but the crowds are a little more different (before my father would shake his head and say that we’ve not enough funds—a trip to the city can suffice, maybe a night in a hotel to enhance the homesick feeling). Realise that it is only when we grow up as adults that we start to hate this routine. Try to remember—what did you want as a child? Perhaps it’s something along the lines of playing all day, or having your birthday or Christmas every day. No school, ever. No homework, or chores, ever. Was that not the want of routine—but a different one? Perhaps adults do not want an unpredictable life; they simply want a _different_ routine.

That routine changed for me, as an eight-year-old. No longer was there the comfort of this routine that I rinsed and recycled. Mother, instead of complaining about her boring routine life and lack of exotic international vacations, started a new routine of complaining about shortage of money. Then that changed to complaining about not having money at all.

We learned about recycling in school. The three important R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle. Let’s say the three R’s is to be interpreted as reducing material used; re-using material; and recycling said processed material into a similarly-based item.

My mother was the same with her complaints. There was the first R with her complaints. The second R, much self-explanatory when she re-uses the same complaint. The third R was a little more unique. It went through some sort of stage like this:

  1.     “We should go on a vacation somewhere. Something hot. Hawaii maybe. Bali. Jamaica. Maybe I should get a side-job. More money so we can go somewhere.”


  1.     “I’m thinking of taking up of another job, so we can take care of the bills. We’re already behind on it and I’m not due in for another pay check until next month.”


  1.     “Kim, we’re already doing badly on the finances. I’m the only one working now. You’re taking out money and spending it on drinking. I’m going to change the PIN for my card, so you won’t take money out whenever you like.”


  1.     “You’re coming home drunk every night. What will Chanyeol think of you? What kind of example are you showing to your child? Have you no shame?”


  1.     “Stop pushing me around. You have no right to. Stop touching me.”


  1.     “Stop it, please stop.”


  1.     “Stop. Stop. Stop, no, stop.”


  1.     [incomprehensible, agonized screaming]


  1.     “Stop, _stop_ , Kim, I’m _begging_ you, please, _please_ , stop it, _stop_.”


  1.  “I don’t know what to do anymore, Chanyeol. I—[sobbing]—I’m trying so hard. I’m so sorry. I’m such a bad mother. I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”



In a horrible, optimistically pessimistic way, my mother did get the routine change she wanted. Not exactly pleasant, but it is a change regardless, is it not? Suddenly she was willing to die for her old routine, working in the office, picking me up from school, in love with her husband, stuck at home and miles and miles away from Bali, Hawaii, Barcelona. Trying to mitigate the situation however, is difficult.

Take a small word of advice: men are stupid. Man, male, boyishness, is a stupidly foolish material. This encompasses all men—good, bad, you (if you are one), and me. This world is somehow built upon a structure where the man is the breadwinner, or the leader of Our So Beloved Capitalism, oppressing and silencing the other sex left and right. Somehow the Y out of the XY chromosome determines domination over the hierarchy built upon stupidity, mistakenly and ignorantly blamed upon evolution. There is a bad man, then there is a man who presents himself as a good husband, a kind gentleman, who loves his mother and kisses his children goodnight. The latter is as good as the former, which is none, so long as they never acknowledge that their life is only advantageously so due to women’s existence. Then when they do, then I’ll reconsider that man’s value, and I thank him for his wonderful conscience.

My father is, to the extremist degree, a bad _bad_ man. There is a vital difference. A bad man goes straight to abusing his spouse. A bad _bad_ man loves his spouse from the ninth grade, grow up together, share sweet kisses under the moonlight, promise his love to her in the form of a gold ring, and impregnates her with a child that he promises to adore to death. Then he betrays her. Such a man never thanked his spouse for his drinking money, the clothes he wear, and the food he eats.

Am I biased? Yes, but rightly so. I hate men like I hate my father. Policemen are rightly called policemen, because often spouse-abusing bastards take up an occupation of authority to hide their crimes. Politicians—men, men, lie-spewing toads sitting on their pink buttocks deciding how the male-based-hierarchy world will work.

Why do we—or most of us, to be scientifically correct—always wish to never adopt the traits of our parents?

That was much of my eight-year-old life’s beginnings concluded. The middle part has yet to start.

 

* * *

 

 

**II: MR. B  
** [STRING QUARTET NO. 15 IN E-FLAT MINOR, OP. 144 BY SHOSTAKOVICH (1974)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxQkpH1JDk0)

There is much that I have yet to introduce. I’d like to do them properly.

Both of my parents, before they lost the opportunity, worked office jobs. We comfortably floated along, but we could not go to Bali. Jamaica. Barcelona. Hawaii. I had enough consoles to feel financially safe amongst my friends, and my belly was always full. Such was routine, of course, until everything went rather awry.

We lived in a neighbourhood, tucked away in a quiet part of town. It was such a way that some houses aren’t accessible until you venture into the alleyways, and the doors would rest there, often unvisited. The sewage was also open near in the alleyways, so nobody really came through there because it stank rancidly. I had lived in one of the houses where the door faced the street.

Now imagine my house, _pre-The Incident_. Everything is clean, because my father started to beat my mother if the house wasn’t so. The neatness however, doesn’t mask the distinctive odor of piss and alcohol; that would be my father’s contribution to the house. I often tucked myself away after school under my bed, playing my console loudly just to drown out the sounds of my mother screaming. As an eight-year-old, I did not understand the conflict. I hated my mother for screaming, and I hated my father for leaving bruises on her. I could not grasp the complexity of the abusive man that gave me half my chromosomes. I did not understand that I could be in danger at any moment. All I knew was that I hated the loud sounds, and that I was constantly afraid.

Sometimes, coming home, I’d hang around outside the house, reluctant to come inside. I had played violent video games, and being eight years old, I knew what death, hurt, and agony meant. I knew what the definition of an enemy was, and I associated the name with my father. In a simulation inside a black box that is the television screen, dismissing the enemy and whisking him to death is easy. When you’re in the real world, where your enemy is your father and you’re eight years old, the law is not forgiving.

So there I was. I strolled around in my little shoes. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t figure out why I was crying. I wanted to call my mother, tell her I’m hungry and that I wanted to watch television and that I wanted to cuddle with her, but she was too preoccupied with being in pain to do it. You could not blame me and say that I should have been more of an intellect. I was as stupid as an eight-year-old, and 911 was only for fires and people unexpectedly falling into the ground with lots of blood. My mother, first of all, predictably falls whenever she was hit, and she did not have blood but bruises. What was my eight-year-old mind to figure out it was an emergency? As a child, all I knew of was enjoyment, hunger and lethargy. I only knew simple math. I hated my father, but I could not calculate that what he was doing was criminal.

I bumbled across the streets, walking around, trying to stretch the time so that I was outside the house as long as possible. I had no friends in the neighborhood, so seeking shelter wasn’t an option.

What was eight-year-old Chanyeol supposed to do?

Sundown was imminent, and I did not want to come home. Either mother or father would come out to look for me soon, and I began to panic. In this sudden realisation, I ventured inside the alleyway to run away, picturing my father looking for me, his face red and fuming with wrath. I knew that his hits would hurt, because mother screamed in agony every time he strikes his fist against her flesh. I looked around. This urgency told me I needed to hide. Quickly, quickly. Hide and seek. Father might be out to search for you.

Hide, and fast.

In a panicked flurry, I knocked at the door in the alleyway. It was the house next to my own, only accessible by the door in the alley. My knees shook and my legs wobbled. I hoped and desperately hoped for the door to open. I was nearly in tears. There was no signs of my father coming out of the house, but the fear crept and grew larger, larger…

The door then opened.

I never met my next-door neighbour. He was dismissed as some sinister old man that lived alone, and he certainly looked the part. I could never describe him in my limited vocabulary then, but I could now. Let’s hope that my memory serves me correctly.

I never knew his age. He never told me. My guess was that he was in his forties, with a foxy complexion. His skin was like a latex glove pulled too far against his skull, his nose a sharp thing. I remembered that his arthritis made him feeble at shaving, so his stubble was dotted with razor cuts. His hair was always wet and limp against his scalp, touched with oily grease, and he never smiled. Essentially he looked like a skeleton, and he wore about three, four layers of clothing, the final one being a rugged coat that reached his knees.

He simply looked at me when he opened the door, as if I had to explain myself. I was too fearful of my current situation and I explained all too eagerly.

“Please help me, sir,” I said feebly, “I-I don’t wanna go home. My dad is beating up my mom—“

At this point I simply burst into tears, and my hands immediately came to rub my eyes profusely. Here I was, eight years old, with my backpack hanging sadly on my shoulders, and my cheeks were full of tears. I caught glimpses of the man looking at me. In the following years I knew him, I came to learn that he was mostly unfazed by anything. My cries were neither piteous nor offensive. He simply looked at me, and I could never figure out what he thought of me.

Somewhere in his heart, he pitied me enough to let me inside. Little me wiped my tears away, though the hiccups still remained. I looked around.

His house, I remembered, was always distinctively… different. I’ve been to a solid number of houses in my lifetime and I’ve never seen one like the old man’s. It was like a hunter’s hut unfinished. The bricks were rawly displayed with their cement, and there was no plaster, no wallpaper, no nothing. I distinctly remember the head of a deer smacked into the wall above a rugged couch. There’s an open doorway to the kitchen, and the door to the bedroom and the bathroom is open. There was also another door, tucked away in the corner, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it lead to then. A large piano stood at the middle of it all… it must’ve been expensive.

The house smelled… awfully musty. It smelled like wood. Despite the horrible colour scheme and ruggedness of it all, it was clean. The floor underneath my feet was solid cement. It was as if someone just gave up on trying to make a built house look nice.

The man had ushered me to sit down, and he gave me a cup of awfully bitter tea and a biscuit tin. I was too upset to complain about the tea then, and I sadly munched on the biscuits he gave me. Back then, I couldn’t analyze the dangers of a stranger’s hospitality, so I therefore naïvely trusted that the man had not given me poison. Thankfully he did not.

He had this limp, and his back was bent with scoliosis. The hand that gave me the cup of tea shook greatly. It took him maybe about a full ten seconds just to sit down, presumably due to back pain. He was in his forties but his body was already crippled beyond use.

He didn’t speak.

“Thank you,” I remembered saying, glumly chewing on the biscuits. He just stared at me with his pin-sized eyes.

“What’s your name?” I said, wiping away the rest of my tears. He looked at me for a moment. Perhaps I just realised now, as an adult, that he was trying to think of something to call himself.

Finally, he croaked an answer.

“My name,” he slowly pointed to himself with fingers that trembled, “Mr. B.”

He had this… terribly foreign accent that I had never really gotten used to. His speech was all slurred, and his r’s and s’ were often over-pronounced.

“Mr. B?” I slowly echoed back, “The letter B?”

He nodded.

“What does it stand for?”

“Not stand for anything,” he croaked simply, “I am only Mr. B.”

In my time knowing him, his vocabulary never improved. Either he had neurologic issues or he was simply just never fluent.

He was silent again. I had figured very quickly that he only gave answers; if you did not speak to him, he’d never talk.

“I’m scared,” I said, and I hugged my knees to my chest. The tears came again. I thought of my parents, rowing in the house again, and surely this time would be worse. The situation declines every time Chanyeol came home. It was a matter of time before his father would start beating him up, too. Maybe they’ve sold his video games so they could afford father’s drinking money.

A radical solution to this problem came to my head.

“Can I stay here?” I said, a little too eagerly. I clasped my hands, “Please, sir. I don’t wanna go home. I’m scared. I’m really scared.”

He simply looked at me. I could never tell what he was thinking about. His face only showed some sort of neutral gruffness that was permanently fixed to his image.

“Stay?” he murmured and, after staring at me for what seemed like a full minute without moving, he eventually said, “Okay. One day only. Then. Call police. They will help.”

I nodded in relief.

That night, he gave me a spare shirt to sleep in. He lent me pillows and gave me a blanket. It all smelled musty, but I was grateful enough. There was no dinner, and he simply gave me another biscuit tin. He himself did not eat anything at all.

__

 

We never ended up calling the police. I didn’t. He didn’t. A day turned into two, two to three, three to a week, week to…

Listen—I was stupid. You couldn’t blame me. What was a scared, wet child supposed to do? I was like a rat drowned in the sewers. I was scared shitless of my father, and the only thing on my brain was that I would be in huge trouble if he ever saw me… sober or not. As for my mother… well, I missed her so of course, but wherever my mother went, my father usually followed. That was the logic in my mind. Ergo, I stayed away from that godammned house for… well. If I were to tell you how long, it’d ruin the excitement of the story.

Was staying with the old man stupidity? Well, I am telling you this story right now, and I shall let you be the judge of it.

My wife (I am twenty-eight now) has always told me that I am a great cook. There is a story behind it. As the days went by living with the old man, I quickly learnt that you had to be self-autonomous. The old man could not cook… nor have I ever even seen him attempt it. He lived on oatmeal and whatever… green junk from the scrappy vegetables section from the grocer’s. He didn’t exactly feed me either; I scrapped around his hunter’s hut house for scraps of food. Then, after a day of a rumbling stomach, I complained to him that I was starving.

It was like, he doesn’t have any concept of human emotion or need. He looked at me, with those pin-sized eyes of his, as if he had just heard the word “hunger” for the first time. His kinked spine looked at me, and those eyes stared into mine past his limp hair.

“You are experience hunger?” he said, like some sort of sentient organism.

I’m tempted to say that the old man wasn’t completely barbaric, but I had to admit that he was feral. The next day, he locked me inside the house, and I twiddled my thumbs for three hours. He came back with TV dinners, packages of grilled meat, quiche, instant mash potatoes—no plastic bags, no receipts. He carried them all in his 3rd layer coat. Mr. B thrust these items into my lap, looked at me in the eyes, and said, “ _you can consume_.” And then he just sat down on his chair and drank his tea, for about… some hours.

I wanted to complain, but I only knew this man for a few days in total. I thought of what my mother had done, when she wanted to cook packaged meals. It was… the microwave, or the large black box underneath the cooker.

By the age of 9, due to Mr. B’s lack of culinary skills and leaving me to topping up my own nutritional needs, I was able to cook most things. Nothing fancy, but prepackaged foods were a doodle, and I could whip up something from scratch. My fingers were, understandably, filled with boils from burns, scalds from all sorts of pans, and scars from jumping hot oils.

Mr. B often retired at his own chair, or would recline to the longer sofa to the sound of radio or the old, still-with-antennae TV that perched opposite of the room, only slightly visible behind the large piano. He never strikes a conversation with me. I thought for a while that he was—this is going to sound horrible—braindead of some sorts, because he would sit for hours at a time in that chair, either looking at the TV, drinking his tea (very slowly) or dozing off.

After a few weeks when it became clear that I was to stick around, he sat me down (well it was what I was doing most of the time, anyway). He looked at me right in the eyes with those needle eyes of his and he looked right through me.

“You live here. I make rule,” he said with his scratchy voice. He said it so slowly so that I heard every word, “I do not have many rule. But I have few. You cannot make many noise. I do not like noise. And you cannot bring friends here. Not even one. Okay? I do not like people.”

I nodded slowly, mouth agape like a stupid child. Being loud… okay. Well, there was nobody to talk with anyway, so I was mostly reduced to murmuring to myself. Bringing friends… well, when I’d lived with my parents, I’d brought my friends often—but even then, without the rule, I wouldn’t’ve invited any. If they saw this scraggy, thin old man that looked like he was about 22 seconds away from dying… well that had social repercussions. And they’d also ask who he was.

“Okay. You got it, very good,” he rasped, “And also one other thing. Come, come.”

He motioned with his witch-like fingers. He stood up, which took him a full ten seconds. Ah—the door at the end of the hallway. He pointed towards it like a threat, and he looked at me with a grip on my shoulders.

“You never go there,” he said, and even as a child fear struck through my bones like thunder, “ever. Okay? Never. Very scary. Not allowed.”

“W-What’s in there, then?” I’d squeaked, already trembling in my dirty white cotton socks, but he just looked at me and pulled this strange grimace.

“Secret,” he said, his voice ghoulish, “Very secret. Nobody know. Only me. You never go in, okay?”

He looked at me again. He shook me by the shoulders until I was like some bobble head in a car, driving violently through potholes.

“Okay?” he repeated, more stern this time, and I nodded my head quickly.

“Very good,” the old man breathed out, and he patted me, “That is only rule. Okay? No noise. No bring friends. No going there. Okay?”

I just looked at him. His pin-sized eyes softened.

“If you need anything. Ask me, okay?” he said, and I finally noticed that the “ay” in his “okay”s sounded more like “ey”.

Then he showed me the bedroom. All this time, I’d been sleeping on the couch under the deer head… and I never saw the old man retire to his bedroom.

It was sizeable, actually—larger than the actual living room itself. It… well, I don’t know how to describe it. It just… looked like an old man’s bedroom. Vintage, musty-smelling, an odor of cut wood and polish. The bed took up perhaps one quarter of the room. There’s a desk, a wardrobe, and some drawers of sorts. There’s no window. He pointed to the bedroom.

“Yours now. You can stay here,” he said, “Anything you want. Tell me. Okay?”

Oh, by the way, by “anything you want”, he really wasn’t kidding.

The first time I asked was… okay, don’t look at me, I was a young child, but I asked for chicken nuggets. I had enough to eat at that point and wasn’t living off of biscuit tins anymore, but I didn’t have the luxury of buying snacks. He just told me to stay inside, and hey presto—chicken nuggets, an hour later, lukewarm but edible. I asked if we could order pizza. He shook his head, said sternly “no, no guests, no”, but he went out and gave me a whole box by myself to eat. He ate the leftover crusts that my childish taste could not process.

Then you know… I figured that I wanted more, so I asked him for toys. You know—hot wheels, cranes, playing cards, board games. To be frank, I don’t think that man even knew what toys were, so he just came home one day with two large bags and offloaded everything onto my bed. He looked at me sheepishly and said—

“I do not know what boys play with.”

These toys were… almost unseen of. They looked like they were made last century. There were tin men, wooden cars, magic boxes, porcelain dolls... almost like what _he_ played with, as a child… presumably, anyway. Not a single China-made plastic neon on sight. There was even a chessboard, with its figures made of glass. I mean I didn’t complain… they looked nice.

Then I thought about the stuff _I_ had back at home. Then I asked him for consoles. He bought them all no problem.

I suppose what stopped me from being a spoiled child was that A, I was raised with, you know, some normal set of parents beforehand, and B, what he will buy and what he _won’t_ buy is completely unexpected. I asked him if we could have some fish for dinner once, and he looked at me strangely and said, “Fish? No no. We do not want.” Then I’d ask for tableware, and he’d only buy ones that are china—you know, fragile. I’ll ask him to buy a couple of games and he’d say, “No no. I do not like the colour in this one”, but he’ll buy it if I egg him on another week. So, after I asked for what a little boy could want in his life, the requests were minimal.

I’m actually not exactly sure where his wealth came from—not even, you know, after I found out something about him. When rejecting my request, “I don’t have enough money” was never an excuse. It took us a few years until he actually brought me outside to do some shopping, but his money was never on a card—and I don’t even know if he knew how electronics worked. He’d pull out, from his third coat, money bills and spare changes, and he’d count them all and paid for the bill more or less exactly. He never took the receipt. As far as I was concerned, he was jobless, he ate oatmeal and greens every day, and that he was a frail old man. Imagining him work… was kind of a pipe thought.

Anyways, life was like that for me. I mean, to me, as a kid, that was pretty good.

__

 

No, I haven’t forgotten to tell you that of course, my parents went batshit when I was gone, and the nation was sensationalized by my story of how I went missing.

If there was something Mr. B was actively keeping up to date, that was the newspapers. When I come out of my bedroom to fix myself some breakfast, he’d be nose-deep in his newspaper. He had these grey-rimmed glasses that matched the fray of his hair, and he’d only have them on while he read something. One day, he motioned me to come over, and he pointed to the front page… with my name and face on it.

“You are in news. See?” he said, jabbing at the cover with his skinny fingers. I could read then, but I couldn’t decipher the bigger words and the smallish text, so he read it aloud for me—albeit croaky and very slowly, like he was trying to spell every word—

 **_HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?_ ** _Police continues search as Park Chanyeol, eight, mysteriously disappeared. His mother Yejin reported that her son failed to come home after school, despite a full-day attendance. Police suspected that he may have been kidnapped or abducted—but there has been no evidence of such. CCTV from various parts of town showed that the little boy was indeed going home, with no suspicious signs of stalking or planned abduction._

_“He just disappeared, like that,” his mother wept at the eight-hour long interview with the police, “He must be so scared. I’ve asked and looked everywhere…”_

_Police has put the boy’s father, Park Kim, as a primary suspect. While co-operative at first, police later discovered that the man was committing extensive abuse to his wife—whether he did the same to his child, it is not yet known, but it is highly probable that Chanyeol witnessed these acts and ran away, as opposed to having being kidnapped. The investigation however, is inconclusive, and is getting rapidly cold due to lack of evidence._

_What’s even more confusing was the fact that Chanyeol’s trail just seemed to… stop. Police dogs last smelt Chanyeol around the front of his house, but his scent completely disappeared. His disappearance fascinated many—some even theorized he was kidnapped by aliens. Regardless, the search continues; Yejin has put up a large sum of money in exchange in turn for information that directly leads to his son’s discovery—and rather downheartedly—dead, or alive._

**_IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION REGARDING PARK CHANYEOL’S DISAPPEARANCE, PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHORITIES AT XXXX XXXX XXXX_ **

I was a little dumbfounded after I heard the whole thing. Mother… missed me. Well, okay, that was obvious, but I’ve stayed here for a few weeks and it… never really hit my brain. I looked at the old man, as if _he_ was the one who was supposed to react. Mr. B said… well, nothing. I should’ve saw that coming.

“Are you going to hand me over?” my voice trembled. Knowing my mother… the sum of money to be offered must be so much. The old man however, simply looked at me with his pin sized eyes.

“For money?” he said, stressing the “n” of “money”, before he shook his head, “No. I have many.”

I didn’t know whether he was being sympathetic or not, but he then said, “You can stay.”

I thought about it. I couldn’t decipher back then that my dad was held as a suspect—so as far as the real world was concerned, my dad was absent from the house. But in eight year old Chanyeol’s world, my father was still there, fists held up, ready to beat my mother into a pulp. With that thought, I shrank backwards and I nodded in agreement. I could stay—and I was to take the offer.

 

__

 

Oh, well, I wasn’t off the hook for school.

I wondered whether I should go back… school was supposed to be important, right? But the old man, since I was staying, implemented a new rule—no going outside. I was to stay here… until further notice. I wasn’t sure whether it was a command, or a suggestion, but his pin-sized eyes scared me, so I obeyed. Plus, the premise of playing with my consoles and toys all day… it seemed much better than going to school.

Okay, well, I was wrong.

One day Mr. B came home with books… to be quite honest, I’m not sure when they were published, because they had this… dusty, frayed look on them. He brought me literature—Shakespeare, Dickens, poems from Bronte, Frost. Math books weren’t arithmetic—they were theories. The Golden Ratio, stuff like that. I took one look at them and, you know, I just carried on playing with my consoles.

The thing was that I was so… starved of human input. Games gave me a false sense of sociality, but even with Mr. B’s ghostly presence doing a back and forth on getting another cup of tea, he never really talked to me. And although it took a while to get used to, I did read the books. I may ask Mr. B sometimes on what this and that meant, but it was thanks to this man that I was who I was at twenty-eight years old.

And then _that_ happened.

 

* * *

 

**III: THE INCIDENT  
** [THRENODY TO THE VICTIMS OF HIROSHIMA BY PENDERECKI (1961) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9xAjiZo7go)

The story is already odious enough as it is. I run away, I live with an old man, and I fend for myself. How much worse could it get?

Mr. B, as far as I was concerned, did not have an occupation—and even now I could not tell whether he was employed or not. He was frail enough to be on some sort of government-given benefits. He was asleep most of the time, his back bent with horrible scoliosis, with his skin pulled tight around his face. The many times I hobbled out of the bedroom to go to the bathroom, he’d be there… like a looming skeleton, his sockets blackened by the light like a horror, sitting there as if with insidious intent.

 

 I suppose as a child I could not see the trepidation of it all. Why would some frail old man—who had almost no contact of the outside world—be persuaded to keep some runaway child? Oh, you could see the images, couldn’t you? What he could possibly do to me. Was he fattening me up to maturity, until I was some sort of mutton? Was he gaining my trust, so he could do more horrible things to me? Was he keeping me like livestock, to wait until a customer comes that was interested enough in my boyish body, so that he could feast upon me, my frame so lithe in a predator’s hands as he gobbled me up, my existence sold for cash… was that what he did to little boys like me? Nourish me, spoil me to my needs, until I was textbook Stockholm’s syndrome, then suddenly come out of his lizardish skin to eat me?

His eyes never closed when he slept. I knew this, because the numerous times I passed by him, he simply did not respond, until I called his name and he would jerk back to life, like waxwork coaxed into existence. The scary thing was—I never knew when he was indeed asleep, or when he was indeed awake.

Mr. B, if you could recall from earlier, had a piano. I suppose he was a player once—sometimes he sat in front of it and play a few tunes to his liking. I could never recognize any of the pieces. He was quite a good player—orchestra-level good, if I could say so, but I don’t know what kind of clock this man operates by, but sometimes he’s up by some ungodly hours. I could nip out of my bedroom at the wee hours of midnight to get a glass of water and he’d be there, bent over his piano, pressing keys at a time, as if mourning for some hypothetical loss.

_“You never go there, ever. Okay? Never. Very scary. Not allowed.”_

_“W-What’s in there, then?”_

_“Secret. Very secret. Nobody know. Only me. You never go in, okay?”_

It’s always foolish to trust a child with a secret. Why Mr. B did it was anyone’s guess.

The door was tucked away in the corner. It was nestled in some sort of metre-long pathway, so you’d miss it if you weren’t looking carefully. The pathway was such that the area around the door was completely dark.

The door was locked like a heavy safe. The knob was at the center, like a large metallic pirate wheel, and you’d have to have some great effort to open it. Every time I got close to that door, some sort of coldness radiated from it… like some sinister feeling…

Sometimes, at night, I’d stand in front of the door, feeling the chilliness sweep my skin, wondering what was behind it.

I remember that back at home, mother had a cabinet specifically for wine. Well—my father ended up drinking it all of course, but I’d near up there at hot summer evenings and press up my face against it. It was like, basically, a see-through fridge, and every time we had a guest, my mother would bring a bottle out and they’d enjoy it. Now I imagine Mr. B probably had something similar—like a fridge—and some other things that he wanted to cool… but I couldn’t imagine needing a whole separate room for it…

One night, I stood in front of that door for quite some time. Now that door—it was some sort of… compelling energy, that willed for me to reach it with my hand, unlock that safe, and reveal whatever was behind. It didn’t matter to me what was behind that door: I just wanted to see it. Pure cat curiosity. And this curiosity just kept getting bigger and bigger that I could not ignore its tempting gaze at me. I looked at Mr. B, sleeping in his chair…

I dared to step forward onto the hallway, and the darkness suddenly enveloped my body. I grasped the wheel—oh, so cold, so cold to the touch. I tugged at it, and my palm immediately froze up from the touch. I tried to swerve the wheel, and it made this awful screeching noise so loud that it echoed back throughout the house. I stepped away immediately after the noise, ready to return to my bedroom—surely the man would’ve heard a noise so loud. I turned around and, like a violent wring, Mr. B makes his appearance, dimly lighted by my bedroom light, and he never look so horrifying.

“Little boy,” he rasped, “What are you doing?”

I trembled so badly. Oh, I trembled so badly alright. I froze at the floor, unable to move. His bony hands curled and grasped around my shoulders, and I could feel his nails digging into me. His pin-sized eyes looked straight through my eyes. Oh, this was the end—this was the end of it all, and I could feel it. I tried to will my legs to move… but they wouldn’t. His face was so close to mine now, and I could feel his lukewarm breaths billowing against my hair. I was definitely about to die, and I was so certain of it…

He moved past me, and I inhaled so sharply through my mouth that I almost choked. He stood in front of the door for a while, and I could hear him sigh between his teeth—which made this sort of whistling sound. I hear the door’s screeching noise. Mr. B had tightened the door again.

He puts his hands on my shoulders once again, and whatever breath I was holding was sucked out of me. It was so scary. He made me turn around and I had to look at him. I couldn’t do anything else—so I burst into tears.

“Why you cry?” he said, and he seemed shocked, “You think I am angry?”

“I’m sorry,” I choked up, dissolving into sobs, “I didn’t mean—“

“Ah. You are child. Very curious, no?” he said. Despite his voice’s intended softness, his latex-like skin never ceased to harden. It was like plastic vacuumed into a skeleton—and that was his whole body. His trembling fingers came to wipe away my tears, and he gently stroked my hair.

“I am not angry,” he said, “But. You must not go. You understand? Never. Secret.”

As if I ever learnt my lesson.

__

 

A few days later, Mr. B went out. He didn’t say where he was going, he just told me that he was going out, and that I, of course, am locked in the house. I waited for ten minutes, to make sure that he was really gone. Then, when I was really, really sure he was gone, I tiptoed and made my way to the darkened hallway—the door tucked in the shadows.

I stood in front of it, and my hand paused as I reached for the wheel. What was the punishment, if I ever uncovered what was locked behind this door? I trembled in fear, yet it was so exciting—however disappointing was the thing behind that door, I simply wanted to open this door to find out. I looked behind me: the old man went and gone, for sure. I took a deep breath and turned the wheel.

It was an effortful thing, trying to open the door. I had to basically wrench it with all my body weight. How Mr. B opened this door at all, it was a mystery—he was a frail old man, with trembling hands, and barely with any energy to even stay awake for most of the day. It took me a full ten minutes just to open the door, until it finally clicked, and a rush of cold overcome me.

Opening the door was another thing. It was heavy. I didn’t know whether to push or pull, because no matter what I did, I couldn’t open it. I looked at the hinges of the door and figured to push. I pushed with all my might. I couldn’t get the door to fully open, but I managed just enough for my little body to slip in.

The cold hit me immediately.

After the cold, it was the stench. It was like… a sickly perfume, on top of something I couldn’t recognize. It was like… if I could recall… mother’s scent, but so much stronger that it was unbearable. I began to shiver.

The room laid ten or so meters in front of me, and it was so cold that icicles formed on the walls and the floor. I actually had to get back out and put on something warmer before entering again. It was like… an icy blue, everywhere. But that wasn’t the main entertainment—the most glaring thing about this room was that it was lined with shelves, and that the shelves were full… of guns.

My mouth opened… I don’t think “dumbstruck” can even describe how I feel. I was just… kind of, you know, shocked. I didn’t even know how to react. There were all kinds of them here—pistols, long ranges, rifles, automatics, manuals… I’ve never even saw a gun in real life. I’ve played enough video games to know that they can kill people, and that they’re dangerous. To have a dozen, a hundred… god, maybe even a _thousand_ just staring at you… it was an unreal experience. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever even registered it in my brain as a real thing. It was surreal. I didn’t know what to react.

The cold was now hurting me—and I think the fear was doubling the potency of that stench. It reeked now, stuck into my nostrils, and I could never forget that smell. I felt like my brain even ingested the smell… it was awful. I felt like my brain had shrank just by smelling it, and it was awful. The weapons however, couldn’t explain the smell.

In front of me was a large curtain that made of basically just the whole of one of the walls. I slowly walked past the shelves, my hands outreaching for the curtain. It was draped, and red—like a theatre curtain. With ragged breaths condensing in front of me, I wrenched the curtain to the side, and I could not describe the noise I let out as a scream because I could—I could not describe—I could not describe the horror that my brain processed at such a short period of time.

Sometimes I went to the butcher’s with my mother when I still lived with her. There would be a metal bar above my head, and hung over my head were ribs of dead livestock—cows, pig, hanging in display, still dripping with crimson. The wind would blow through the open-door shop sometimes and they would rock back and forth, sometimes scraping against the metal bar because the wind moved them too much.

A woman’s face stared at me.

Two of them.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Men, too. One.

Two.

Three.

Too many.

Too many.

They hung, like laundry. Metal bars laid parallel to each other, to my left and right, and human bodies were hanging on the bars. They were frozen, already set too long in their rigor mortis, naked and their bodies covered in icicles, like a whale dotted with barnacles. I could not see their pupils—maybe if I ever touched their eyes, it would just push back towards the brain, like frozen flesh. If I ever hit their bodies with a stick, it would make this wood-struck sound, because their bodies were so frozen. Some sort of… misery… no. Agony… too easy a word. Some terrible, odious suffering, painted their faces in such an insidious way. Their body parts were so gravity-held, yet so frozen above the air.

Then, after the stench hit me, the smell came round to suffocate me.

I didn’t know what made it hard to breathe—the smell, or the hyperventilation that resulted from panic. I couldn’t move. The bodies looked at me now, as if their deaths were my guilt. They seemed to loom, rocking forward against the metal bars, trying to surround me. It’s horrible. It’s so horrible to look at. One of the bodies suddenly moved—though I thought they were dead—and I screamed so horribly when those hands wrenched my shoulders—

“You opened the door,” the body said, and I almost fainted at the sight of—not a dead body—but Mr. B clinging onto me. There’s no way this could end in a good way. I was going to get killed for sure. I’d be one of the bodies hung on the metal bars, skewered hastily by a wire, to rock back and forth in this fridge like laundry. It clicked now—the weapon, the bodies, the secrecy. It was the old man’s doing. It was the old man’s doing, and his hands were upon my shoulders now, waiting to prey upon me…

“You opened the door,” he rasped again, as if I was meant to answer. My knees refused to function, and I had to grasp onto him to stand up. His pin-sized eyes looked at me. I started to cry.

“I am not mad! Why are you crying?” he said, seemingly more exasperated rather than angered. My shock stopped my sobs. What answer was I supposed to give?

He looked around the room, and the old man let out a sigh that immediately froze with the air. He patted my back.

“This. No place for little boy like you,” he said, “Let’s get out. Okay? Very cold.”

I let him usher me out of the door. I was still frozen with shock, so I was basically being pushed. I had been so horrified that I did not hear Mr. B come back home and push the door to this room open. He told me to sit, below the deer’s head. Despite the temperature difference, I still feel so cold.

“Biscuit? You want?” he said, shaking a tin of broken crumbs of it in front of my face, “Candy? Tea?”

I was too shocked to say no. I let him place a saucer of lukewarm tea on my hands. It wasn’t hot, but it felt piping to my fingers.

He sat down on his chair, taking his time to do so. He looked at me, and said,

“I kill people.”

I swallowed.

“I…”

“Yea. Very crazy, no?” he said. He didn’t laugh. “Very secret. That is why, I did not want little boy like you to go inside. It is very secret. I hide dead man and dead woman. Many of them.”

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be scared of—his confession, or his blantantness. He seemed so frail that it was so unrealistic that he had all this power to take life away from… how many bodies was it? I didn’t count…

I thought about the violent video games I’ve ever played. The glorification of violence through the screen seemed so dull now. No euphoria, no cheer, no sense of achievement nor admiration—nothing. Just a shadow looming over me, rocking in his chair and nursing a cup of tea, looking at me with his pin-sized eyes.

Yet, even with my discovery, his face remains blank an unchanged. Suddenly the situation was as lukewarm as my tea.

“It is very scary,” Mr. B continued, nodding as if he was agreeing with some hypothetical statement, “It is okay if. You want to tell police. Or go home. I do not hurt little boy like you, if you tell.”

I didn’t know what to think. There was this man, who wore layers and layers of clothes, who ate biscuits and drank tea for days and slept for half the day—and you’d presume he was some harmless (if not somewhat creepy) man. Then there was this cold, cold room full of—

But he hasn’t harmed me. In fact, except for feeling a little irked by his presence, I had thrived in this man’s house for all I knew. I was safe from my father’s grasp. He provided me everything I needed.

I looked at him.

“Are you going to hurt me?” I wrung my hands. He looked at me and shook his head.

“No,” he said, “You are little. You have not done wrong thing.”

I thought of the frozen room of bodies. Then I thought of my father. Mr. B’s sins far outweighed my father’s, yet the sentiment was so vastly different.

And so, my mind suspended in the air.

Mr. B made me hot chocolate, and said that he was sorry for not telling me sooner. He tucked me to sleep for the first time ever, and I slept without a nightmare.

 

* * *

 

****

**IV: THE REBUTTAL  
** [I. ALLEGRO MODERATO - VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR, OP. 35 BY TCHAIKOVSKY (1878)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Kt3OUav7M)

And so for the next twelve years, I lived with the man until his disappearance.

My life was not without some close calls.

One day, completely unexpected, my mother appeared at the doorstep.

She’d been asking around the neighbourhood, trying to look for me, knocking on each and every door. I was a few months shy of my ninth birthday at this point. I was in the living room, looking through Mr. B’s orchestra vinyl, having finally acquired taste for some finer music. I heard a knock on the door, and, knowing that Mr. B had almost no visitors whatsoever, I knew this was special, somehow. Mr. B got up from his chair and hobbled to the door, opening the door ajar so that only some centimeters was visible.

“Hello,” my mother’s voice rang, and I jumped and ran to the door. The room was dark and the door was only ajar for some distance, so I was not visible.

“I am not buy anything,” Mr. B growled in some tone, ready to shut the door, but my mother pushed against it. She did not see my small body behind Mr. B’s looming figure.

“No—I—I was just wondering—“ she said. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a poster of my face, “Have you seen my son? He’s been missing for a while now, a-and I was wondering whether you’ve seen him around…”

Mr. B didn’t answer. He obviously recognized me in the poster. I was so ready to force the door ajar and embrace my mother, but…

But…

For some reason, I didn’t.

I didn’t know why. I froze in my steps. This was my mother—why would I not immediately come to her embrace? And yet for some reason, I didn’t want to. I lived in the comfort of the old man’s house… and I have grown used to it. And if I returned to my mother, what was I to do? Go back to her routine, of complaining about the daily life of her chores, her bores… My mother seemed so boringly human. She seemed so incompetent now, so attached to my father—suddenly such a useless creature.

Mr. B knew that I was behind him. I realised that his answer now depended on my decision—whether I should leave or stay.

I retreated into the dark.

Mr. B spoke.

“No, I have not seen him,” he said, “I am sorry.”

We never spoke about it, but that was the establishment of our relationship of him as… what, some sort of my guardian.

I lived my life in ease. I played much, and I learned as much. Mr. B didn’t care for what I did, but somehow I felt pressured to continue schooling. What I could not learn by myself, Mr. B taught me. I soon learned that he was a much wise and a knowledgeable man—he knew so much more than some basic primary schooling. He got me interested in old literature, as well as the classics of music. Sometimes I’d watch him as he played the piano. It was an odd dynamic, but I was never interested in the outside when I had Mr. B’s… company.

It was weird company, but…

Anyways, as I said, my life was not without some close calls.

Mr. B often went out, and I knew for what reason—it was to commit manslaughter. I did not know why, and I did not want to know why. I was not to question his morals, and I just accepted that was what he did. He never showed me how he did it, and I never saw it either.

I never saw it happen, but I knew it happened. Although I never visited the room again, I see that the wheel had been rotated every so often. Sometimes I see him go in there, but I would immediately look away. I wouldn’t witness anything like that again for the world.

Sometimes I tried to ask him. How he did it. I never saw blood on his hands. It seemed so impossible because he seemed like such a frail old man.

“Mr. B,” I said one day over casseroles. I’d made it, and Mr. B was eating his portion of it. He looked up, as if I had interrupted him.

“What do you do—“ I said, and I swallowed my food. I thought about what I should say.

“Is it for money?”

He looked at me.

“Why, you are very curious little boy,” he said, and I was fourteen at this point, “Very important to preserve organs. That is why, I keep them in room. It is fridge. Mr. B’s Fridge. Very secret room.”

“And you sell the organs?”

“Yes.”

“To who? I never see anyone visit the house…”

“To whoever want organs,” Mr. B said, “I only take healthy one. You know, like very ripe fruit, yes? But never good people, no. I take bad people organ. But is very hard because bad people, always very bad health. They take, you know, drug, tobacco. I take one with good health but they do not deserve good health. You know what I say?”

It wasn’t too difficult to decipher what he meant at this point. I nodded.

“But… doesn’t that mean you’re also a bad person, too?” I frowned, “What’s your viewpoint on that one?”

He didn’t laugh.

“There is no good or bad,” he said, “There is only purpose in life.”

“And what’s that purpose for you, Mr. B?”

“Oh, you know, just survive,” Mr. B said, “Human always do survive for very long time. It is in human blood.”

He shook, as if he was chuckling, but he didn’t.

“I get very many money. Very easy job,” he spooned casserole past his lips, “Money does not know moral.”

Mr. B… I suppose one of his missions, it failed. He hobbled home one day, and there was this huge, huge wound, bang on the center of his chest. He was already so frail and I thought he was going to die.

He told me to bring him this bottle of disinfectant from the kitchen cupboards. I helped him peel off his layers of clothes. For the first time I saw his upper half: simply bones and ribs. He had a gash on his left breast.

I poured the disinfectant on him. He did not make a sound—he didn’t even grunt in pain. I watched him, without numbing himself, stitch his wound back together. He then just put on some new clothes, discarded the bloodied ones, and then simply fell asleep on his armchair without a word.

I wasn’t sure if he was even human.

 

* * *

 

 

 **V: ANASTASIS—THE HARROWING OF HELL  
** [NOCTURNE IN E-FLAT MAJOR, OP. 9, NO. 2 BY CHOPIN (1830-1832)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6b3swbnWg)

 

I don’t know whether Mr. B is still alive.

Once I was old enough, I moved out into my own apartment. I packed my stuff in a van and I went. Mr B. paid deposit and first months’ rent. He visited me for housewarming.

“You are a man now. Not a little boy, yea?” he said, patting my back. He had brought my tin toys and my old books, and put them out on the shelves and windowsills to decorate. Occasionally he’d visit me, or I’d pay him a visit. Nothing changed. He’d sit at some chair and drink his tea, staring into the abyss.

Then one day, he disappeared.

I visited him, and he was simply gone. I went inside the house, and it was stripped bare, as if nobody had ever lived there.

Curiously, I checked upon the door tucked behind the hallway. When I touched the wheel, I expected to rotate it quickly so I could avoid freezing hands—alas, it was warm.

The door pushed open, and I could open it easier as an adult now… but no cold, no stench hit me. The room was no longer filled with the cold. Now it was just… a room lined with plastic. Not even the shelves were there. The curtain that once hid the bodies… gone. The room behind those curtains, empty.

I waited, in vain, for him to return.

Mr. B never came out to conferences or such, but he attended my college graduation some years back. He took me to some antique shop—probably older than he was—and he treated me to tea and sandwiches. I tried to pay for it, but he politely declined and rummaged onto his layered coats for exact change. We walked back home in twilight.

Typical of him, he would not say anything if you didn’t strike up a conversation. We passed by the streets, with no extraordinary thought in mind, before something indeed extraordinary ran across my mind.

“Mr. B,” I said aloud, and he hummed deeply in response. My walk slowed. He seemed to have noticed my slowing paced, and he too, stopped walking.

“Are you ever going to tell me who you really are?”

He looked at me with his pin-sized eyes. I see through his layers of coat—his frail body, the shaking of his hands, the bones through his skin. The murder on his hands, the fluttering of his sparse eyelashes. His lips, like a wrinkled pug, spoke to me.

“I am only Mr. B,” he said, and his thick accent had never really disappeared, “It has been 12 years. I am what you see.”

For the twelve years he raised me, he never smiled.


End file.
